Detour
by RobotRollCall
Summary: When Steve stepped into the time machine to return the Stones, it was going to be a very, very long time before he came back. And Bucky knew. He knew and he gave him his blessing.


_A/N: As I've probably mentioned before, I'm a big fan of the ending Steve got. But as you also know, I'm a big fan of Steve and Bucky's friendship, and I don't think there's any way Steve would have just up and left. They totally talked it over before Steve left, and so here's my take on how that went and how it wasn't the end of the line-just a detour. _

_This is a companion piece of sorts to my other Post-Endgame story, It's Been A Long, Long Time._

* * *

Silence hung heavy over the battlefield, and for a long time, nobody moved. Then Pepper stepped back and Rhodes stepped forward to take Stark's body home, and the spell was broken. People started pushing themselves back up again, speaking in hushed tones, moving to find their friends and help the wounded. Bucky pushed himself heavily to his feet, feeling the weight of every single one of his one hundred and six years as he did.

He'd seen Steve briefly during the battle and was relieved to see him still alive and upright at the end of it, though his friend was still kneeling in the dirt. At first, Bucky thought it was grief—he'd known Stark far better than Bucky had, and he knew the two of them had been good friends despite their differences. As he got closer, though, Bucky realized that grief was part, but not all, of what was keeping him down. Steve was bloody, filthy, and shaking with exhaustion, utterly spent.

Bucky crouched down next to him, getting one of Steve's arms over his shoulders before he could sink the rest of the way to the ground. Steve groaned with the motion and Bucky patted his hand warmly. "Don't worry, buddy," he said. "I gotcha."

Steve looked up, the whites of his eyes shining through the dirt on his face, and though they were swimming with misery, there was a little smile there too. "Buck," he rasped, the corners of his mouth curving up. "You're alive."

"Yeah, I am," Bucky agreed. "Thanks to you." He wasn't entirely sure what Steve and his friends had done to bring them all back—Strange hadn't taken much time to explain before opening his magic portals—but he knew they'd saved them all. He pushed himself slowly back up to his feet, pulling Steve with him. "And I didn't come all this way for you to clock out as soon as I got here. Let's get you taken care of, okay?"

Steve nodded, leaning heavily on Bucky as they started, very slowly, to move. Bucky wasn't really sure where they were going, but maybe one of the magicians could open up a portal to a hospital or something. Sam appeared, took one look at Steve, and moved to help support his other side, steering them toward one of the portals that opened back up to Wakanda. Shuri was waiting in the opening, directing those helping the most critically wounded through to her lab. Bucky allowed himself to relax just a little. Steve would be in good hands.

Steve managed to hang on until they got him into the nearest exam room and up onto the table before passing out. He did smile wearily up at the both of them and mumble something that Bucky interpreted as him being glad they were both okay. Then Shuri came in and shooed them both out and told them to go and take a shower or something and get out of her way.

Steve was asleep when they came back. He was clean again, and somehow managed to look worse for that—cuts and bruises stood out all the more vividly now that there was no more dirt hiding them. His left arm was bandaged from wrist to elbow—the straps of his broken shield had been holding together a gash that went nearly to the bone, pulled tighter than they should have been in an attempt to keep him from bleeding out. Beneath the sheet he was under, his torso was a rainbow of mottled greens and yellows, vivid purples and deep blues—though whether the bruising and internal bleeding had come from having the Avengers Compound dropped on top of him or from one-on-one combat with Thanos, who was to say?

Bucky sighed, sitting back in the chair next to the bed they had moved Steve into. There was more, spelled out in Shuri's meticulous notes, but that was all Bucky could manage for now. He would look over the comprehensive list later when Steve was feeling well enough to get antsy about being in bed and Bucky needed to know what to keep him from doing. But for now, Steve was healing. Shuri's medicines and little cell-sized robots were doing their thing inside his body, and he would be okay.

After making sure Steve would be alright, Sam left to help with cleanup. The seriously wounded were all tended to, but everyone was hurt and it was a big battleground—they needed to make sure no one got overlooked. He hovered in the doorway before he left, looking uncertain.

"I'll stay with him," Bucky said. With his wings, Sam could cover a lot more ground for search and rescue than Bucky could. And Steve had gone and gotten himself hurt in a fight that was too big for him again, and looking after him was Bucky's job.

Bucky crossed his arms and looked back over at Steve after Sam left. "You really were gonna take on that whole army by yourself, weren't you, punk?" he asked, shaking his head, though pride was swelling in his chest. "I thought I was taking all the stupid with me?"

Steve slept for a long time. Shuri assured him that it was just exhaustion, and Bucky didn't wonder about that. It had to have been a long five years. The fact that Steve hadn't given up on trying to get them back was, well, it warmed something in Bucky's soul while not being terribly surprising at the same time. But it had cost him—even in his sleep, there was a sadness, a weariness that still hung over him.

Bucky eventually drifted off too, waking up the next morning to Steve arguing with Shuri about getting out of bed. Shuri wanted him to stay in bed for another day until her tech finished whatever it was doing to fix whatever had happened to his leg, and she mentioned something about bruised kidneys. Steve wanted to get up because he felt fine, honest, and there was stuff to do. Though she ended up needing some help from Bucky, Shuri won in the end, and Steve sat back in the bed with a grumpy huff.

"I know you always get grumpy with nurses, Stevie, but she's a princess. You should be more polite," Bucky said with a smile. After Siberia, Steve and the rest of them had stayed in Wakanda, going out for missions on the downlow, and any time Steve came back wounded, he and Bucky always had this conversation.

Steve huffed a laugh. "You'd think I'd have figured that out by now."

"You'd think," Bucky agreed.

"So, how are you?" Steve asked, his blue eyes swimming with concern.

"Me? I'm fine," Bucky said. "I'm not the one who went head to head with Thanos."

"No, I mean…" Steve said. He swallowed hard, and when he looked back at Bucky, that concern was still there, along with just a hint of disbelief that he was actually there. "I watched you…_disintegrate_. You've been…you've been dead for five years. Are you, I mean…"

Bucky reached over and rested his hand on Steve's forearm. "I'm okay. Really. I'm really here, and I'm really okay. It…" he trailed off, not really sure how to explain it. "I do remember disintegrating," he admitted. "It didn't hurt though. And it was scary as hell watching it happen, but then it was just like I fell asleep and woke up out there in the jungle. Then the magician guy showed up and said it had been five years and we were going Round Two with Thanos, so…" He shrugged. "I know it's been five years, but from where I'm sitting, it just feels like a day and a half."

Steve nodded. "I guess that's good. I mean, I'd hate to think that…"

Bucky smiled. "I wasn't locked in some kind of limbo for five years, or feeling any pain. I'm really fine, Stevie. Better than you are." He squeezed Steve's arm. "You're the one who's been fighting for five years, man. Tell me what happened."

And Steve did. It took all day, his story interspersed with food sent in for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but he told Bucky everything that had happened since the day he disappeared. He told him about going to space, the desperation and what felt like their last hope and how completely crushed he was when it didn't work. How he fell apart for a while. He told him how he picked himself back up and threw himself into every mission he could find—anyone he could help, any clue he could find, _any_thing he could do. How he realized Natasha needed that to hold herself together more than he did, and how he pulled back to let her take the reins, splitting his time between new missions and running counseling groups for the people who'd lost people. He told him how every day with no new trace of how to fix what Thanos had done, he could feel another little piece of his soul breaking.

Then he told him about Scott and his return from the Quantum Realm, and how his idea filled him with so much hope, it felt like waking up from the dead. He told him what they tried with Stark, and then with Banner, and then how Stark figured it out and they actually…

"You actually travelled in time?" Bucky asked, mouth agape and not quite sure at which part in the story it had dropped open.

"Yeah," Steve said, and he was still tired, still had the weight of so many wars hanging on his shoulders, but there was a sparkle in his eyes and a grin in his voice that belonged to that eight year old kid in Brooklyn who'd hung on every word of the science fiction dramas on the radio.

"Wow," Bucky said, which was completely inadequate, but the only word he could find. Steve hadn't been the only kid in Brooklyn dreaming about the wonders of the future.

"It was…so amazing and so terrifying," Steve said, his grin growing wider.

He described his journey through the Quantum Realm as best as he could for a fascinated Bucky before telling him about taking on the Battle of New York from a different angle. Bucky just about fell out of his chair laughing as Steve told him about his battle with his past self for the Mind Stone.

He told him how they'd had to continue on into the past then, after losing the Tesseract, and Bucky marveled a little bit at the guts that would have taken, even for Steve, to take that chance at never making it back. He told him about returning to Camp Lehigh and the S.H.I.E.L.D. bunker there, and his voice got very soft and sad and far away as he recounted what it had been like to see Peggy, how hard it had been to tear himself away before she saw him.

Bucky gave him a minute to compose himself, thinking as he did so how cruel it was of the universe to let him get so close to the love he'd lost while still keeping him so far away.

The story took on a more somber tone after that as Steve told him about returning to the present and finding they'd gotten all the Stones but they'd lost Natasha. He stopped for a while then, and Bucky found he needed the silence to pull himself back together too. He knew most of the rest of the Avengers, and he liked most of the ones he knew, but Nat had been different. She and Sam had been the only ones he really connected with, and she…Her past hadn't been all that different from his. She'd understood him and helped him find himself again in ways that none of the others, for all their good intentions, had been able to. She was one of the few people Bucky felt like he could actually call a friend. And she was gone.

Steve picked up the story again with some difficulty, though the words came easier as things happened faster. They'd put the Stones into the gauntlet Stark made, and Banner snapped his fingers and brought them all back. They'd had about thirty seconds to enjoy it all before Thanos returned. Then the fight started again, and Steve filled him in on everything that happened before the rest of them arrived with Strange.

"I don't know what we would've done if he hadn't…" Steve said, shaking his head, and that weariness was back in his shoulders again. Bucky knew he was seeing that battlefield, feeling that despair at having gotten everything back just for Thanos to come try to take it away again.

"We were waiting for the big, dramatic entrance," Bucky said, clapping his shoulder with a smile and getting one in return from Steve. "Always gonna have your back, man," he said, still smiling, but serious this time.

Steve stopped his recount there—no need to go into the rest of the fight. Shuri had come in a little earlier and warned them not to stay up too much later—super-soldier serum or no, Steve still needed his rest. She'd adjusted his medication too, and Bucky could see it starting to tug Steve's eyelids closed.

Bucky moved to the seat in the window after Steve fell asleep, staring out at the night sky, but close enough to hear if Steve needed anything. He watched the stars for a long time, admiring how beautiful they were, glad he was alive to see them again, and thinking of all the people out there who were alive because Steve and his friends never gave up.

The next morning, Steve was permitted to get out of bed, and he and Bucky went outside and walked around, taking it easy in deference to his leg, which was still a little stiff. That was the only remaining sign of his injuries. It didn't take much prompting to get Steve to talk about Stark—that was one of the things weighing on him that Bucky felt like he could do something about, even if it was just listening.

Shuri decided Steve was well enough to travel the next morning. Travel had come a long way since the troop transports of the 40's that Bucky remembered, but even the sleek, futuristic jets of the Wakandans couldn't beat one of the magicians and their portals. It was still a few days until Stark's funeral, so they checked in with everyone, talked some with Banner about returning the Stones to when they belonged, and spent the rest of the time in one of the cabins on Stark's property, just resting. They talked more about the five years Bucky had been gone, as well as talking about the past—their years 'on the run' in Wakanda, the Howling Commandos and the war, and the days when they were kids back in Brooklyn. Bucky could tell there was something on Steve's mind, something different than the upcoming funeral, but figured there was no point dragging it out of him. Steve would tell him when he was ready.

"Hey, Buck?" Steve asked the night before the funeral.

"Yeah?"

"I, uh, I wanted to talk to you about something."

"Okay." Something in Steve's face said that this was more serious than wondering what he should say at the funeral, like he had been all day, so Bucky sat down at the dining table and folded his hands in front of him. "What's up?"

Steve sat down too, not looking like he was sure of where he was going. "Um, well, you know how we've been talking about stuff, and I've been…it got me thinking about Peggy, you know?"

"Sure," Bucky said. A lot of their talk of the past kept circling back to Peggy, and it seemed only natural—seeing her earlier in the week (or fifty-three years ago, depending how you were counting) was bound to bring her back around to the front of Steve's mind.

"After the service tomorrow, Bruce is going to help me out with getting all the Stones back—there's enough Pym particles left for me to go and come back…"

"Uh huh," Bucky prompted when Steve seemed to get stuck again. He knew that. He'd been helping Steve map out a plan to return the Stones. Steve still seemed stuck on how to continue, drawing uncertain circles on the table with his finger, and it hit Bucky like a bolt of lightning what he was trying to say. "And you're thinking, instead of coming back, of going back a little bit farther and finding Peggy."

Steve looked up, surprise etched across the lines of his face. "How did you know that?"

Bucky laughed. "Because I know you, Steve. By this point in our lives, I've figured out how that brain of yours works. Give me a little credit."

Steve smiled a little at that, color rising in his cheeks. "It's a dumb idea, isn't it?"

Bucky's smile softened. "I think it's a great idea."

"You do?"

"Steve, you should have married her in 1945." He knew that had been Steve's plan for after the war. Steve had even had a ring. "To get this kind of second chance…" Bucky shook his head. "You can't pass that up."

Steve nodded, but still seemed hesitant. "I just…"

Bucky tilted his head, studying Steve curiously, and when he figured out what Steve was trying to say this time, he wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or slap the idiot. "Steven Grant Rogers, you are one hundred and five years old. You had _better_ not be about to ask me for permission to go marry the girl you love."

Steve went as red as a tomato, blushing to the tips of his ears. "I wasn't asking permission," he huffed.

"Then what were you doing?"

"I was, well, I…" He looked across the table and there were all kinds of emotions swimming in his eyes. "I love her, Buck. Even when I thought I'd missed my chance, I…I was supposed to move on, and for eleven years, I've been trying, but…" He sighed. "I never could. But to go back and just…have a life…" He shook his head. "If I went back and just left you here alone, I couldn't…I couldn't do that. Not without knowing…"

Bucky smiled softly, feeling moisture spring unexpectedly to his eyes. "You would really do that?" he asked. "You would really give up your chance to be with the love of your life to make sure I was okay?"

"I would," Steve said softly.

"Stevie, that…" Bucky shook his head, and had to swallow hard a couple of times before he trusted his voice enough to keep talking. Steve had gone above and beyond in so many ways, sacrificed _so_ much to help Bucky already. But that he would offer _this_… "I can't let you do that, Steve."

"You're not letting me do anything," Steve said. "It's my choice."

Bucky nodded. "And you should choose to go back." He smiled. "I'm okay, Steve. I really am. Shuri…That stuff she did after Siberia, she got all that Hydra stuff out of my head. It's only me in here now. I remember everything—my life before Hydra, and, yeah, the bad stuff too, but that's something I have to work through on my own, you know? And I can only do that because you got me this far. You saved me, Steve. You saved me in more ways than I can ever count, and I'm finally in a place where I can stand on my own two feet again. I really will be okay. And I won't be alone. Sam's here. He's a good guy, and he's helped me out almost as much as you have. I can trust him to have my back. I'll be fine."

Steve huffed a watery laugh. "You'd say that even if it wasn't true."

Bucky inclined his head in agreement. "Yeah, I would. But it _is_ true." He leaned forward onto his elbows and looked across the table. "Look me in the eye, Steve, and tell me I'm lying."

Steve looked at him then, a long and calculating look. If Steve left, Bucky would miss him—dear _Lord_, he would miss him!—but Steve had helped make him whole again, and he really would be okay. He tried not to let any anticipation of missing him show on his face, putting everything he had into looking sincere. If there was even the tiniest bit of doubt in Steve's mind, he wouldn't go. And after everything…After everything, Steve deserved to have that good life.

After a long moment, Steve sat back, something like wonder in his eyes. "You'll really be okay?"

"I really will," Bucky assured him. He smiled. "I'm not gonna lie and say that I won't miss you like hell, but for once in your life, Steve, make the selfish choice. You've more than earned it."

Steve swallowed hard, his voice wobbling dangerously when he spoke. "I'll miss you too, you know. I'm still not sure if—I mean, I, I just got you back…"

Bucky rounded the table and pulled Steve up into a fierce hug. "I know." It was still a weird mental shift for him, remembering that those five years he'd missed had actually happened. But Steve had lived them. He kept finding and losing Bucky—first Azzano, then the train, then D.C., then Bucharest, and after that, it felt like they'd really found each other again, only for Thanos to take it away. "I know," he repeated.

He hugged him tighter. "But you saved me," he said again. "You saved me, and then we had two years in Wakanda. Two years where things were good, and we were like we used to be. We had two good years and now…" He pulled back, keeping his hands on Steve's shoulders. Steve's eyes were watering, and Bucky knew his were too, but he didn't care. "Now, you're gonna go and you're gonna marry that girl you should have married seventy-eight years ago. You go and you have a life, the normal kind of life you never thought you would get. Get married, get a house, have a family." He smiled. "Name one of your kids James." That got a smile out of Steve. "Have a good, long life. And then when you get old, like you never thought you would, you come back here." He pulled him back into the hug again. "When you catch back up to this timeline, you come back. And I'll be here. It's not the end of the line yet, pal."

Something suspiciously like a sob heaved Steve's shoulders, and he hugged Bucky so tightly he was surprised he didn't hear any of his ribs crack. "Thank you," he whispered.

They stood there for a long time. When they finally let go, they sat down again, but Steve no longer had any trouble looking Bucky in the eye. "She'll…" Steve started a little uncertainly. "If I go back and ask her to marry me…She'll say yes, right?"

Bucky almost laughed at that, suddenly reminded of a much younger Steve and a conversation in a tent somewhere in a muddy field in France. "Of course she'll say yes, you idiot," Bucky said. "A blind guy could tell you two were nuts about each other. Besides…" He reached across the table and bumped Steve's arm. "You said she had your picture on her desk, right?"

Steve nodded.

"That was in 1970," Bucky reminded him. "You don't hang on to something like that for twenty-five years for someone you've gotten over."

Steve nodded, and Bucky could tell he'd had the same thought, just wanted confirmation.

"You know," Steve started. "You could come with me. There's enough Pym particles for us both to start the trip, and when we stop in 1970 to leave the Tesseract, we could get some more. We could both go home."

Bucky honestly hadn't thought of that, and he took some time to consider. There was something incredibly tempting about going home again. Going back to before everything had gone wrong. His family was back there, his ma and his pop and his sister. He could see them again. But…He sighed, suddenly very aware of the weight of his metal arm in a way he never had been since getting this new one. He and Steve were both men out of time, but Steve was the same Steve he had been in 1945. Bucky was a very different Bucky, in more ways than just his anatomy.

He sighed deeply. "You know, it's tempting. But I don't think I fit there anymore. It's home, but for me, it's the home that's in the past." He hitched a smile onto his face. "I think I'll try my luck with a new century."

Steve nodded, acceptance on his face. He knew Bucky just as well as Bucky knew Steve, and the answer didn't surprise him. "Do you want me to look for you?" he asked in a softer voice. "After the train, I mean. I'll know this time that you're not dead. I could save you."

Bucky considered that one longer. "I don't think you can," he said at last. Banner had explained the rules of time travel to him while Steve had been preparing to take back the Stones. "Cause of the whole weird future-is-the-past thing. It wouldn't be me you saved. And if it somehow worked out that it was…" He shuddered at the thought of anything, no matter if it might be good, re-writing the inside of his head again. "I may not like everything about myself and what I've done, but I have a handle on who I am now. I'm good in here." He tapped the side of his head. "I don't want to risk that," he decided.

"I'm sorry," he went on, having just realized what a difficult thing he was asking Steve to do. "That seems awfully hard of me to ask, having you just sit there knowing what they're doing to me. I—"

Steve reached across the table and put a hand on Bucky's arm. "It's alright. It's your life, Buck. If this is your choice, I'll respect it."

Bucky nodded, grateful.

"And I know what they did to you, and there's not a day goes by I'm not sorry for that," Steve said, but he kept going before Bucky could tell him it wasn't his fault. "But I also know that you're safe now. You're here, somewhere you can be happy and safe, and Hydra is dead and gone. So, okay. If you're sure that's what you want, okay."

Bucky smiled. "Thanks, Stevie." He arched an eyebrow with a smile. "Of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't raise _any_ hell for Hydra while you're back there." Since the future was already set, maybe whatever Steve did wouldn't change anything. Or maybe he was already part of the past, changing things so that when Hydra reemerged in 2014, there were enough chinks in their armor that they _could_ be taken down. Bucky shook his head. Best to stay out of _that_ rabbit hole. Good thing the time travel was in Banner's hands, not his.

Steve laughed. "Well, obviously. Just what kind of man do you take me for, Buck?"

They both laughed.

"Hey, um," Steve started, rubbing at the back of his neck. Faint color rose in his cheeks again, though it wasn't the deep blush of earlier that had accompanied his asking for something he thought might be too much.

"Yeah?"

"I owe Peggy a dance," Steve said. "When I get there. I just…I've never actually learned how."

Bucky grinned. "You want me to teach you how to dance?"

"Please?"

"Yeah, okay," Bucky laughed, getting to his feet. The little punk was ridiculous. Some things never changed. "You have any music?"

Steve pulled something up on his phone and set it on the table.

"Alright," Bucky said. Slow song. Good choice. "Okay, so we're gonna stand like—no, don't copy my position, I'm being the girl. You're supposed to lead. Your hands go _here_." He positioned Steve's hands where they were supposed to be, then started over. "Okay, so we're gonna stand like this, and we're gonna move—Nope. Okay. Your feet go like this so they don't step on mine." He kicked at Steve's foot until he moved it into the right spot. "There. And that one over there." He grinned. "It's a good thing you asked for help."


End file.
